The Great Wall

She Says:

The time came for us to blow out the exterior wall of the great room.

So we did.

We took it down and got it back up within 48 hours.  I only had to spend one night with only a thin layer of plastic sheeting protecting me from all manner of raccoons, possums, wild pigs, and other critters that go bump in the night.

He Says:

Obviously, this house has major problems.  And it was major cheap.  It's thrown several dozen curveballs at us already, but we're confident now.

So, we wanted a really dramatic wall of windows in the front, and we wanted to relocate the front door, and we wanted a much larger and better-looking front door...all of which adds up to a complete new front wall.

We added several temporary ceiling support studs and then removed the front wall.

The Woman really got into it with the sawzall and ripped down the studs.  Indeed we did get the entire job done with 48 hours...it would have been 24 except for the mushrooms.

Mushroom!  Mushroom!

The rotten area behind the old front door, when excavated, revealed these:

Yes, those are the black mushrooms of death.  they were growing, upside-down, under our subfloor.  Ugh.

We ripped out the rotten subfloor, and the rotten rim joist.  Then we repaired with new wood and subfloor.    We framed it for 5 of the 36x72" casement windows we had bought, and our new door with doorlights.

With new wood in place, we built the new wall, and sheathed it...

...cut the openings for the windows..

...weatherproofed it...

...installed the windows...

...and the new door!

We're pretty darn happy with the way it turned out!

The Great Ceiling Debate

She Says: 

As I mentioned earlier, HoneyDo wanted to vault the ceiling several feet up into the attic.

I thought that sounded like an awful lot dirty work.

We went back and forth for months, while we were working on the other parts of the house.

Him:  But think of how awesome it will look!

Her:  But think of all the drywall and insulation in my hair!

Him:  It will open up the room and make it feel so much bigger!

Her:  Hello? Hair?

In the end, HoneyDo sold me on a "compromise."  We wouldn't vault it per se, but we would include the rafters within the space of the room and lay tongue and groove ceiling boards above them.  That would add 6-8 inches to the height of the ceiling and give us a beam ceiling, which we both really wanted.

So we dove in and tore down the ceiling.  And this is what our great room looked like:

He Says: 

The existing ceiling was 5/8 drywall under paired side-by-side 2x4 rafters.  The span of the ceiling was max 12'6", and the 2x4's sagged a bit at that length.  It looked bad, but hey, if the house wasn't a piece of crap, we could never have afforded it.

I did want to do the big vault up to the roof beams, but what we ended up with looks better than that would have, and was a ton easier to build.  Good compromise.

The ceiling boards are 1x6 pine Tongue and Groove.  Lifting them up into the attic was the tough part.

I built a jig on my 12' worktable to construct the beam-covers from 1x6 and 1x4 lumber.  This kept the beam-covers straight, and when they were built, we lifted them into place over the old beams and nailed them on.

She Says:

It turned out to be every bit as dirty as I had suspected the vaulting would be.  I cannot tell you how many gallons of paint and tubes of caulk it took to finish that ceiling.  We spent a full 2 weeks on that part of the project alone- it just never seemed to end.

He Says:

Like She said, the T&G ceiling boards required a LOT of finish work before paint, which included creating our own crown moulding out of 3 separate pieces.  But it all looks so good now. Really proud of this part of the house.

She Says:

And it was Totally.  Worth it.

Study Construction

We went back to our surplus store to get more unfinished cabinetry, just like the ones we used in the kitchen.  We looked at other options, particularly Ikea, but these unfinished oak cabinets are such good quality and price, we went this way again.

We chose several upper cabinets to store office supplies, and two large pantry pieces for craft supplies.  The pantries will eventually be converted to wardrobes for guests once the addition is built, which includes a fantastic upstairs craft room!  But I'm getting waaaay ahead of myself...

Demo was really simple- tear out the teal carpet.  Remove the closet door.  Remove baseboards and trim.  Done!  We then drywalled the closet doorway.

Paint went up next:  Spice Delight on the ceiling, Khaki on the walls, and Phoenix Sunrise on the accent wall.

Next HoneyDo mounted the cabinets and I got to work painting.  It was kitchen cabinet deja vu!

Here are the uppers on the left side (next to the window), mounted and painted.

And the right side of the room, cabinets installed.

I wanted a *lot* of desk space.  We chose butcher block countertops from Ikea for this job, which we snagged when we got the piece for the island.  We also got the legs and these Capita brackets from Ikea:

Oh, yeah, and we ran the same hardwood flooring in here that's throughout the house.

Then we tiled above the desk space to add some texture and interest to the room.

Next time, I'll post the finished product!

Kitchen Cabinetry

He says:

So, there are about a million ways to do kitchen cabinets.  You can have custom cabinets made, you can order ready-to-assemble cabinets from the web, you can order mass-produced cabinets from a variety of retail stores...but do any of those solutions sound like us?  Nope.  We have to do things on a budget and we want the house to be unique.  

So, we located the wholesale cabinet outlet in our area.  Fantastic people.  They have in-house credit and they have every possible size of cabinet - as long as you want unfinished oak.  Well, we did want unfinished oak.  Like the rest of the house, our skills are more "paint grade" than "stain grade" so we knew we wanted a unique and high-quality paint finish, and we knew we'd be doing that ourselves.  

We obtained a cabinet size list from the outlet store and went home to design our dream kitchen.  We actually did this sitting at the card table in the temporary kitchen.  We made an accurate drawing of the available space and tried about a dozen different layouts to get exactly what we wanted.  We kept the stove, fridge, and sink on one end of the room and went whole-hog for storage with the rest of it.

She Says:

They actually had a lot of different semi-custom choices for the cabinets.  We put a lazy susan in the corner cabinet, and ordered a few of the upper doors without the plywood face so that we could install our own glass.

He Says:

The unfinished solid oak cabinets are sturdy, with thick face frames and 1/2" and 5/8" hardwood ply sides and backs.  They come with hidden euro-hinges and we added our own soft-closers for $3.00 per door.

To install the lower cabinets, we scribed a level line on the wall with our long level and a pencil, and installed the cabinets with 3" screws into the wall studs.  We clamped the lowers together and screwed them together through the face frames with 2" screws.

In the corner of the kitchen we installed an 8' tall pantry unit.  We had to trim it about 1/4" to fit between the floor and ceiling.  

Uppers were installed with multiple 4" screws into wall studs, and face frames clamped and screwed together with 2" screws.

One thing we couldn't purchase was a cabinet to contain the fridge, so we built it from scratch.  We used a Kreg brand pocket-screw tool to assemble the face frame and finish-nailed and glued the face frame to the 3/4" hardwood ply cabinet box.  Viola, we had a refrigerator cabinet that looks so fine.  

She Says:

And the moment of truth: the fridge slid in perfectly into its cabinet, with no room to spare!

  

Garden Window

She Says:

In all the places we've lived, I've never had a window over the kitchen sink.  I know, so sad.  I've always wanted a place to grow an herb garden, arrange pretty colored glass bottles, and the like.  So HoneyDo ordered garden window for me to replace this one:

Now, after the sliding glass door install, this was a cinch.  The new window is a bit bigger all the way around than the existing one, and not in exactly the same place.  So we tore off some more siding, "repaired" the existing hole with plywood,

 measured and cut the correct sized hole,

installed the new header,

wrapped that part of the house with weather proof HardieWrap,

and cut the final hole through the wrap.  We made the cut in an X shape and then wrapped the pieces around the inside of the window and applied the flashing, making it all nice and water tight.

Then we acted silly for a bit.

Okay, back to work. 

HoneyDo came up with a great idea- we took some old tie down straps and screwed them to the stud and then to the window just in case the window tried to tip out while we were shimming and leveling it.

Once it was right where we wanted it, we screwed it into place, and voila!

 A lovely garden window, just for me!

He says:

A garden window is a really nice addition, and although it is more expensive then a regular window, it installs the same way.  After we finish the exterior siding, we will install a pair of braces that came with the window for extra support.  

Sliding Glass Door Install

She Says:

Once we got the walls down to the studs, we were ready to tackle our scariest job to date: the new door.  

Here is the before shot:

We're going to build a deck onto the back of the house, and so we decided to replace these windows with a sliding glass door.  The idea is to let more light into the kitchen as well as making the deck a more accessible living space.

I'm not going to admit that we got in over our heads on this one, because we installed it without a hitch.  But in hindsight, we definitely should have had another dude help us out with this one.  HoneyDo did most of the exterior work- pulling off the siding, removing the existing windows, and cutting the hole to the correct size.  Then we built and installed the header, which was very large and very heavy.  We put flashing around the entire opening,and were ready for the door.  

We'd had Lowe's deliver the door, and we'd even conned the delivery guys to bring it in the house, up the rickety door ramp, and into the Laundry Room, where it had been sitting for several days.  But now it was up to us to move it into position.  And it was up to me to hold it in position while HoneyDo screwed it in place.  

This door was HEAVY.  Like 300 pounds at least.  To complicate matters, there's a 3 foot drop from the floor of the kitchen to the ground, so if we were to drop it, it would be destroyed.  And we had custom ordered it and spent way more than we had originally budgeted, and we certainly couldn't afford to replace this one if we did drop it.  So no pressure here.

You can always tell how heart-in-the-throat a particular project was by the lack of photos.  There are *none* during the door installation.  It wasn't until after it was safely and completely installed that we stopped to take a photo:

But isn't it wonderful!  The built in shades between the glass work fabulously, too.

And here's a shot from outside.  Please make note of the 3 foot drop.  Whew.

He says:

The door is pretty awesome.  It's a Pella brand with all the options, so it was pricey, but after living with it for a while, it's totally worth it.  It is on the North side of the house, so it takes the brunt of winter storms and it doesn't leak or do anything scary.  It's heavy and feels like a bank vault door.  Love it.

Kitchen Demo

She Says:

And so the Kitchen demo starts.  

Before...

Those upper cabinets came down waaaaay to easy.  (Shudders)

Bottom cabinets and soffits come out.  Why is everything splattered with soy sauce?

Tile and final lower cabinets gone.

Room with a view of the Laundry...

And just for the sympathy vote, here are some shots of our "working kitchen" as we progress... a fridge, a microwave and a card table... what else do we really need?